Graphics Card Shipments Drop But Nvidia Still Holds Significant Lead

Not that long ago we heard that graphics card shipments were set to take a tumble in Q2 of this year, that’s April through June. The reason for this was because Scrypt-based cryptocurrency miners were dumping their AMD graphics cards onto Amazon, eBay and other sale sites in favour of newly released ASIC Scrypt miners. This meant many prospective graphics card buyers were opting for buying from the floods of cheap used mining cards instead of buying new ones at higher prices. That predicted drop has indeed happened for the entire discrete graphics market which Jon Peddie Research say fell 17.5% compared to the previous quarter.

The overall decline of 17.5% for discrete graphics is surprising given that the overall PC Market increased by 1.3%. Given the link to mining you would think that AMD took the hardest hit – this wasn’t the case. Nvidia suffered a 21% quarter-to-quarter drop compared to AMD who dropped by 10.7%, roughly half of that. However, there could be a link: it could be a spillover effect of cheap used AMD graphics cards affecting demand for Nvidia’s more premium priced products. Despite that fact Nvidia still dominates the market with 62% share compared to AMD’s 38%.

JPR didn’t specify when we might see a recovery, but we should expect to see a recovery once AMD and Nvidia release their new ranges of graphics cards at the end of this year.